The present invention relates to data saving in a plurality of tape recording apparatuses, and particularly to a technique for selecting a destination tape recording apparatus for saving data transmitted from a host computer out of a plurality of tape recording apparatuses.
Conventionally, when data transmitted from a host computer is to be recorded on a magnetic tape in a system including one or more host computers and a plurality of tape recording apparatuses, a destination tape recording apparatus for saving the data is selected with a simple algorithm that selects an available tape recording apparatus. However, the size of data transmitted from the host computer varies from several KBytes to several tens of MBytes. In addition, the performance of the tape recording apparatuses used varies among the apparatuses. Even if tape recording apparatuses in accordance with the same specification are provided, the performance varies due to secular changes in the apparatuses, not to mention the case where the tape recording apparatuses consist of different types of apparatuses.